THINKing

Calling All Guest Bloggers

Photo credit: EmmiP from morguefile.com

Here’s a shout out to all guest bloggers. This is a new year and I want new voices here on THINKing.

Painless Giving

If you’ve been with us here for a while, you know that every year we promote Holiday For Charity, which is the idea of asking friends and family to donate to charity in our name instead of giving us Christmas gifts. Charitable giving can do wonders for an organization’s reputation. We’ll talk more about Holiday For Charity in a later post, but today, I wanted to discuss some other painless ways to assist charities.

Media Continues Self Destruction

Photo credit: Grafixar from morguefile.com

The US media aren’t trusted by Americans, and the self destruction continued this weekend with the incessant drumbeat of impending doom ahead of so-called Hurricane Irene. As Kendall Allen tells us in her piece Fools In Raincoats,

Generate Your Own Infographics

Above is an infographic generated using Visual.ly, a service that allows users to create their own infographics. These visual representations of data are a great marketing and public relations tool. Are you using them in your marketing and PR?

Here are a few infographic resources you may want to investigate.

Five Ways To Not Be A Weiner

I’m sure you have heard about Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner’s PR problems stemming from his inappropriate online relationships with at least six women. This cretin provides an example – albeit a bad one – from which we all can learn.

Bad PR Firm, Naughty PR Firm

Well, here we go again. You’ll remember back in 2006 when Edelman PR was caught flogging for client Wal-Mart . It seems that we have another PR debacle. There now are stories about Facebook hiring PR firm Burson-Marstellar to discredit Google in the press.

Playing Both Sides Of The Table

Editor’s Note: this is a guest article from Danny Wong, who manages Media Relations for Blank Label Group, and he helped to co-found the group’s startups Blank Label, Thread Tradition, and RE:custom. He’s also played on the other side of the table writing for outlets like the HuffingtonPost, ReadWriteWeb and TheNextWeb.

Top 5 PR Posts

Our PR-related posts are among the most well-read. So, I thought we’d bring to the forefront some evergreen features on PR.  Now, let’s review.

Communications Planning 101 - Developing a communications plan requires a disciplined approach. Your first order of business is reviewing your current program for impact and efficiency.

Hook Me Up With A Human

Oh, what has happened to the carbon-based organizational interface? Many organizations have digitized humans – aka carbon-based units – out of existence in their customer service operations. Now, I love digital technology as much as anyone, but it is time to bring the people back into their appropriate customer service roles, don’t you think?

The Rule Of Reciprocity

Are you using the rule of reciprocity?  I ran across this topic not too long ago, and it got me to thinking about how this rule applies to marketing and PR.

Much of what we PR people do is based upon this rule. Do something for someone else and they will turn around and do something of equal or greater value for you.